BOYERTOWN — For so many years, basketball was the only sport Ethan Shalaway loved, the only sport that mattered to him.

Track and field eventually entered into the picture, but to stay in shape for hoops.

But what a terrific track and field athlete Shalaway turned out to be as he grew into one of the best ever javelin throwers in the area, closing out his high school career with an outstanding senior year.

The Boyertown senior went undefeated in the regular season, setting a new school record at nearly every meet. He closed out the season by easily capturing the gold medal in javelin with a 201-2 at the Pioneer Athletic Conference Championships. Not only that, he also took silver in the shot put with a 46-5½ and bronze in the high jump with a 6-0. He went on to capture gold at the District 1-AAA Championships in the javelin with his final school record of 208-8, then medaled at the PIAA Championships, placing fifth with a 179-11.

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And Shalaway is The Mercury’s All-Area Boys Track and Field Athlete of the Year.

It will also be track and field, not basketball, he will continue to pursue on a partial athletic scholarship at the University of Pittsburgh, where he hopes to grow into a decathlete.

There will always be a big place in his heart for basketball but a bit of room has been more for track and field thanks largely to all the success he’s had.

But it all started with Shalaway’s passion for basketball, where he was also a top player on the Bears varsity team for four years.

“I’ve been playing basketball since I was in second grade and my dad is a huge basketball fan,” he said. “So that’s how I got started. I really loved basketball all my life.”

Like all Boyertown kids it seems, Shalaway also played baseball along the way. And, in a way, that steered him towards track.

“I started playing baseball in fourth grade, played it until seventh grade,” he said. “But I didn’t get too much playing time so I switched to track to try and stay in shape for basketball.”

And a whole chapter of Shalaway’s athletic career started right then and there. Not right away, but in time.

“By eighth grade I did shot put, high jump, and I ran the 4x400,” he said. “Then I went to high school, and again I was doing track for basketball, trying to stay in shape. I remember we had this high school high jump coach, remember him saying something about going to districts, an invitational, some kind of an important meet. I said, ‘Wait, that’s during a basketball tournament.’ I was worried about missing a basketball tournament for a track meet. I wanted to do the basketball tournaments rather than some big track meet because I didn’t really know they had such a big meaning.”

It took some more time for Shalaway to find out about that “big meaning,” and a strange twist to realize that the javelin might be his thing.

“In tenth grade, that’s when I picked up the javelin, when one of my friends said it would be fun,” Shalaway recalled. “He said, ‘Hey, you should be throwing the ‘big stick’, it’s real easy.’ First time I was just throwing it in the ground just to get the feel for it a little bit. I liked it, but didn’t really realize what it was.”

Turned out his dad wasn’t just a basketball fan, but also a former javelin thrower.

“He started telling me to throw because he did when he was a kid in high school,” Shalaway said. “He actually had the javelin record for a little bit. He threw something like a 179-11. But a couple of days later his teammate threw farther than him and beat his record.”

His father, Dave Shalaway, is also a Boyertown graduate and kept pushing his son pretty hard these last two years. Shalway’s 6-foot-3 frame came in handy, too.

“I knew we didn’t have a great javelin program, that I might be the best on the team and that if I tried a little bit I could beat some of the guys,” he said. “My 10th-grade year we had a throwers coach who went around and helped everybody, was all over the place. Since I was also doing jumping and stuff, sometimes I didn’t get help that I needed.”

That suddenly changed one day.

“There was a meet where I was actually doing real well in the high jump. I jumped a 6-3,” Shalaway said. “My dad was standing there watching with a friend of mine’s dad who was telling my dad that he was a 6-5 high jumper and was also real good in the javelin, threw a 219 in high school, that he knew what to do throwing the javelin.”

So Shalaway and his dad kept telling the man, Tim Kulig, that there was an opening coming up on the Boyertown coaching staff and talked him into applying for the position. Kulig got the job and was very influential on Shalaway’s growth his final two years.

“He helped me my junior and senior year, right when I started getting more consistent,” Shalaway said. “He was a great help to me. He was a great athlete, loved track. It was great to have him around. I also went to a couple of clinics, one with Bog Sing from Penncrest who threw 270 back in college. He knows so much about it. I was very impressed by him.

“And between the two of them and my dad, I learned a whole lot more. All of them were just great together. My dad worked all the clinics with me, watched all my throws this year, loved teaching me, kept motivating me because he saw the potential in me. I’m really thankful to all three of them, thankful to have such a supporting dad.”

And his younger brother Elijah, who was a Boyertown freshman during the season, also started throwing the javelin, which gave a bit of added motivation.

“He helped a lot too because he was always there pushing me, telling me ‘You better throw it high or someone is going to come up and beat you,’” Shalaway said. “That’s why I had to throw so far so he couldn’t catch me. I didn’t want him to break my record.”

To his Bears coach Jon Zellers, he was “The backbone of the Boyertown Bears.”

“The excitement Ethan brought to the coaches, team and his family was a great experience,” Zellers said. “It was a great year and I had a front row seat to watch him work out and his passion to reach his goals. Honestly, I am never surprised to see the results of hard work and desire both qualities of which Ethan possess. What was surprising to me is how much support he gave his competitors. He was genuinely excited to see them do well and have their own personal bests, was always the first there to congratulate a great throw.

“I have had some really great kids come through Boyertown since I have been there and Ethan is definitely one of them. He was a great captain – vocally, supportive a leader by actions.”

For Shalaway it was the perfect high school ending.

“The last month of the season was the best month of my life,” he said. “I broke the Berks County record, was in the newspapers and people all around me were telling me congrats and good luck. And the team this year was just great. They all looked up to me and I could have an influence on them. To be in that position to be able to help the younger kids get better was great. Being able to help people is absolutely important to me.”

So important it also earned him the Boyertown High School’s Citizen Award. And if all that throwing, jumping, playing basketball, and helping people wouldn’t take enough time, Shalaway also plays the drums in the Boyertown High School Band.

He seems to have re-ignited a javelin interest at Boyertown, too.

“I think I did,” he said. “Now my little brother coming up. He loves throwing and is good at it. Some other kids seem to be interested. I know a lot of people really enjoyed watching the meets this year, that I let people know the javelin is really fun to watch.”